Paul Ryan wins the social media battle at the VP debate

The highly anticipated vice presidential debate might have been a draw or a victory for either of the candidates — it all depends on which pundit you prefer. However, on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter there was only one winner: Paul Ryan.

How the debate played out on Twitter

If one does not consider Twitter’s outrage with Joe Biden’s laughter during the debate, the two vice presidential nominees came out almost tied, both having gained around 10,000 followers. Ryan, @PaulRyanVP, went from 382,789 followers prior to the debate to 393,255 followers after the debate. Biden, @JoeBiden, went from 195,990 followers prior to the debate to 205,834 followers after the debate.

While Biden might have fewer followers overall, his Twitter account was more active than Ryan’s on debate night. The first tweet from Paul Ryan’s account came at about 9:30 p.m. ET and included President Obama’s @BarackObama Twitter handle. Biden’s account sent out their seventh tweet at the same time as Ryan’s first. Both account tweeted soon after when the two nominees spoke on the topic of Medicare. Third, and the last, tweet from Ryan’s account came at the very end of the debate. By that time, Biden’s account had sent out 11 original tweets and 12 re-tweets, including a re-tweet of @BuzzfeedAndrew.

Biden’s twitter account continued to tweet after the debate, asking their followers to re-tweet them if they are on #teamjoe.

And while neither of the campaigns spent any funds on promoting a certain hash tag on the day of the vice presidential debate, debate-related topics were trending worldwide as well as across the nation. The Twitter trends included nominees’ names, Libya, Afghanistan and even Jack Kennedy, a trend that went worldwide.

For more details see the slideshow below:

The vice presidential debate did not break any previous Twitter records, as the first presidential debate did. During the 92 minutes of the debate, 3.5 million tweets were produced. Overall, the night of the vice presidential debate saw over 4 million tweets. The Jack Kennedy quip by Biden inspired most tweets per minute, and a previously mentioned led to a worldwide Twitter trend.

According to Twitter @gov, following were the breakdowns of debate topics and candidate mentions:

How the vice presidential debate played out on Twitter. (@gov/Twitter)

How the debate played out on Facebook

The nominees might been tied when it came to new Twitter followers, but in the race for Facebook Likes, Paul Ryan was a clear winner having gained a little over 90,000 Likes throughout the evening. Vice President Biden, who has one tenth the Likes that Paul Ryan has, only gained less than 13,000 Likes.

Ryan’s Likes did not change in the five hours prior to the debate, and then climbed rapidly during the 90 minutes that the two nominees debated on issues such as recent attacks on U.S. compound in Libya, Medicare, war in Afghanistan and Abortion. Biden’s Likes on the other hand climber steadily throughout the day.

Another metric that Facebook utilizes for its pages is ‘talking about,’ which measures the number of Facebook users talking about specific figures. Joe Biden’s ‘talking about’ number remained unchanged through the day of the debate at 243,143. Paul Ryan’s, on the other hands, increased from 1,405,232 few hours prior to the debate to 1,438,737 after the debate.

This Time photo shoot might have had something to do with the increased in ‘talking about’ numbers for Ryan.

Interestingly enough, even though Ryan’s ‘talking about’ number was higher than Biden’s, he only dominated the conversation among female Facebook users of all ages in three states – Nebraska, Kansas, Alabama. According to the CNN-Facebook Insight tool, Joe Biden dominated conversation among variety of demographic – youth vote, female vote – in number of states (see the slideshow below).

Paul Ryan wins the user engagement race on both Twitter and Facebook

Sure, it could be because he has more followers than Biden, but Ryan has been more successful in engaging a larger number of both Facebook and Twitter users on the day of the debate.

Both Paul Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden attempted to engage users on Facebook prior to the debate (Jana Kasperkevic/Houston Chronicle)

More than quarter of a million people like Paul Ryan’s photo compared to almost 19,000 people who liked Joe Biden’s photo. Vice President Joe Biden did, however, get more shares, since that is what the photo asked the users to do.

The two campaigns tweeted out the same two photos on their Twitter accounts:

Biden’s tweet asked the users to re-tweet the photo, which resulted in 1,676 re-tweets over five hour period. Paul Ryan took a more personal approach tweeting a photo of himself with his son. The photo was re-tweeted 1,828 times over a four hour period and received almost seven times more likes than Biden’s tweet.

VP Debate: The meme edition

Paul Ryan might have been silent on Twitter during the debate, but @PaulRyansBicep and @PaulRyanGosling made sure to keep the Twitterverse entertained. Democrats got their own meme in the form of @LaughingJoeBiden. In fact, Joe Biden’s laughter might be the Big Bird of the vice presidential debate.

Of course, it’s worth mentioning that both Republicans and Democrats got their own meme-worthy trending topics on the day of the vice presidential debate in #iDoThatMittRomneySmirkWhen and #ThingsThatMakeBidenLaugh, respectively.